DELINEATION
Envisioned for a chance to be curated into, and later was juried into, the Uneasy Beauty exhibition at the Fuller Craft Museum in Brockton, MA. Inspired by practical effect creature design as well as the fear of the unknown and the barriers one draws to keep themselves within a life they find to be safe.
MORE ABOUT DELINEATION
I've been a huge fan of creature design for pretty much as long as I can remember. In fact some of my earliest memories include me watching Star Wars and being absolutely fascinated with the banthas. I was quite young and while I was smart enough to figure out that it wasn't a real world animal, I couldn't figure out how the folks who had made the movie had created something that looked so real and yet was still compeltely fake. Of course I soon came to realize that they were created by an incredibly simple trick, putting costumes on elephants, but my fascination with folks building completely new creatures has stuck with me since.
Now, while creature design is astounding, actually building creatures that can pass as real is super expensive and time consuming, and money and time are not neverending resources I have in general, but especially not ones I had as a college student. However, when given the opportunity to create a look with the prompt "Uneasy Beauty" and a chance to be juried into an exhibit at the Fuller Craft Museum, I ran to my creature fascination for inspiration. As I couldn't go full creature, I ended up creating something inspired by the fear of the unknown that showed this though the uncanny valley, covering the whole body in foam and textiles so you couldn't see exactly how human the wearer unerneath is. I'm quite happy with the results, and the folks at the Fuller Craft Museum seemed to be happy with the final product as well.
I created the main dress from this semi-ruched poly cotton blend and half-attached strips of hand-distressed poly cotton organza. They were only sewn in the side seams on one end, or half-attached, so they could be draped and moved around in a way that was comfortable and convenient for any wearer. It's for the most part a princess line sloper, but I drafted the sleeves and overall length to be far too long to add to the unease of the look. The head piece is a base of layered insulation foam covered in distressed and painted Fosshape, some screening so the wearer could see through it without revealing their eyes to vieweer, some the same more of the distressed organza like that on the dress, and a barbed wire trim.
QUICK STATS
Completed: May 2018
Construction Time: 36 hours
Honors: Juried into Uneasy Beauty at Eclipse, the 2018 MassArt Fashion Show Exhibition and juried into the Fuller Craft Museum's 2018 Uneasy Beauty Exhibition